New Hope for Stage 4 Cancer Patients
from AARP magazine, October/November issue, p. 31
. . . surgery ADRIENNE SKINNER awoke from cancer to stunning news.
"I came to, and he told me we couldn't do it," Skinner says of her surgeon,
who had planned to remove a
tumor from the end of her bile duct. "He said, 'Cancer has
invaded your liver. It's stage 4. It's systemic.'" She was diagnosed with ampullary
cancer, a form so rare that no standard treat ments existed. Until now.
After some "pretty nasty" chemotherapy, Skinner ,
60, of Larchmont, New York, became part of a clinical trial for pembroli
zumab, marketed by Merck as Keytruda.
The drug helps the body's immune system fight the disease. Skinner
started infusion treatments in April 2014. In July her surgeon took another
biopsy. "He said, 'If somebody hadn 't told me you had cancer, I never would
have known,'" she notes. The tumor was gone.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has since approved
further uses of Keytruda, such as for pa tients with a genetic mutation called
mismatch repair deficiency. The drug continues to be tested for use by patients
without the mutation . It is approved for some head and neck, lung, bladder and
metastatic melanoma cancers, as well as Hodgkin lymphoma.
Durin g clinical trials , the medication was famously
used to treat former President Jimmy Carter, who two years ago announced he had
cancer in his brain and liver and said his fate was "in the hands of God,
whom I wor ship." Four months later,
his cancer was gone.
Skinner has seen similar results. She's back at work and makes
a point of swimming and playing tennis. "I'm running around like a
maniac. I'm out gardening right now," she says. "I know what a gift is,
and I know the gift of life." -Mindy Fetterman
No guarantees that I will have similar results, but looking very hopeful . . .
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